It was after ten o’clock. The dancers had already dispersed and the
last lights were being put out. To-morrow the tents would be struck, the
dismantled merry-go-round would be packed into waggons and carted away.
An expanse of worn grass, a shabby brown patch in the wide green of the
park, would be all that remained. Crome Fair was over.
By the edge of the pool two figures lingered.
“No, no, no,” Anne was saying in a breathless whisper, leaning
backwards, turning her head from side to side in an effort to escape
Gombauld’s kisses. “No, please. No.” Her raised voice had become
imperative.
Gombauld relaxed his embrace a little. “Why not?” he said. “I will.”
With a sudden effort Anne freed herself. “You won’t,” she retorted.
“You’ve tried to take the most unfair advantage of me.”
“Unfair advantage?” echoed Gombauld in genuine surprise.
“Yes, unfair advantage. You attack me after I’ve been dancing for two
hours, while I’m still reeling drunk with the movement, when I’ve lost
my head, when I’ve got no mind left but only a rhythmical body! It’s as
bad as making love to someone you’ve drugged or intoxicated.”
Gombauld laughed angrily. “Call me a White Slaver and have done with
it.”
“Luckily,” said Anne, “I am now completely sobered, and if you try and
kiss me again I shall box your ears. Shall we take a few turns round the
pool?” she added. “The night is delicious.”
For answer Gombauld made an irritated noise. They paced off slowly, side
by side.
“What I like about the painting of Degas...” Anne began in her most
detached and conversational tone.
“Oh, damn Degas!” Gombauld was almost shouting.
From where he stood, leaning in an attitude of despair against the
parapet of the terrace, Denis had seen them, the two pale figures in
a patch of moonlight, far down by the pool’s edge. He had seen the
beginning of what promised to be an endless passionate embracement,
and at the sight he had fled. It was too much; he couldn’t stand it. In
another moment, he felt, he would have burst into irrepressible tears.
Dashing blindly into the house, he almost ran into Mr. Scogan, who was
walking up and down the hall smoking a final pipe.
“Hullo!” said Mr. Scogan, catching him by the arm; dazed and hardly
conscious of what he was doing or where he was, Denis stood there for
a moment like a somnambulist. “What’s the matter?” Mr. Scogan went on.
“you look disturbed, distressed, depressed.”
Denis shook his head without replying.
“Worried about the cosmos, eh?” Mr. Scogan patted him on the arm. “I
know the feeling,” he said. “It’s a most distressing symptom. ‘What’s
the point of it all? All is vanity. What’s the good of continuing to
function if one’s doomed to be snuffed out at last along with everything
else?’ Yes, yes. I know exactly how you feel. It’s most distressing if
one allows oneself to be distressed. But then why allow oneself to be
distressed? After all, we all know that there’s no ultimate point. But
what difference does that make?”
At this point the somnambulist suddenly woke up. “What?” he said,
blinking and frowning at his interlocutor. “What?” Then breaking away he
dashed up the stairs, two steps at a time.
Mr. Scogan ran to the foot of the stairs and called up after him. “It
makes no difference, none whatever. Life is gay all the same, always,
under whatever circumstances--under whatever circumstances,” he added,
raising his voice to a shout. But Denis was already far out of hearing,
and even if he had not been, his mind to-night was proof against all
the consolations of philosophy. Mr. Scogan replaced his pipe between his
teeth and resumed his meditative pacing. “Under any circumstances,” he
repeated to himself. It was ungrammatical to begin with; was it true?
And is life really its own reward? He wondered. When his pipe had burned
itself to its stinking conclusion he took a drink of gin and went to
bed. In ten minutes he was deeply, innocently asleep.
Denis had mechanically undressed and, clad in those flowered silk
pyjamas of which he was so justly proud, was lying face downwards on
his bed. Time passed. When at last he looked up, the candle which he
had left alight at his bedside had burned down almost to the socket. He
looked at his watch; it was nearly half-past one. His head ached, his
dry, sleepless eyes felt as though they had been bruised from behind,
and the blood was beating within his ears a loud arterial drum. He got
up, opened the door, tiptoed noiselessly along the passage, and began
to mount the stairs towards the higher floors. Arrived at the servants’
quarters under the roof, he hesitated, then turning to the right he
opened a little door at the end of the corridor. Within was a pitch-dark
cupboard-like boxroom, hot, stuffy, and smelling of dust and old
leather. He advanced cautiously into the blackness, groping with his
hands. It was from this den that the ladder went up to the leads of
the western tower. He found the ladder, and set his feet on the rungs;
noiselessly, he lifted the trap-door above his head; the moonlit sky was
over him, he breathed the fresh, cool air of the night. In a moment
he was standing on the leads, gazing out over the dim, colourless
landscape, looking perpendicularly down at the terrace seventy feet
below.
Why had he climbed up to this high, desolate place? Was it to look at
the moon? Was it to commit suicide? As yet he hardly knew. Death--the
tears came into his eyes when he thought of it. His misery assumed
a certain solemnity; he was lifted up on the wings of a kind of
exaltation. It was a mood in which he might have done almost anything,
however foolish. He advanced towards the farther parapet; the drop was
sheer there and uninterrupted. A good leap, and perhaps one might clear
the narrow terrace and so crash down yet another thirty feet to the
sun-baked ground below. He paused at the corner of the tower, looking
now down into the shadowy gulf below, now up towards the rare stars and
the waning moon. He made a gesture with his hand, muttered something,
he could not afterwards remember what; but the fact that he had said
it aloud gave the utterance a peculiarly terrible significance. Then he
looked down once more into the depths.
“What ARE you doing, Denis?” questioned a voice from somewhere very
close behind him.
Denis uttered a cry of frightened surprise, and very nearly went over
the parapet in good earnest. His heart was beating terribly, and he was
pale when, recovering himself, he turned round in the direction from
which the voice had come.
“Are you ill?”
In the profound shadow that slept under the eastern parapet of the
tower, he saw something he had not previously noticed--an oblong
shape. It was a mattress, and someone was lying on it. Since that first
memorable night on the tower, Mary had slept out every evening; it was a
sort of manifestation of fidelity.
“It gave me a fright,” she went on, “to wake up and see you waving your
arms and gibbering there. What on earth were you doing?”
Denis laughed melodramatically. “What, indeed!” he said. If she hadn’t
woken up as she did, he would be lying in pieces at the bottom of the
tower; he was certain of that, now.
“You hadn’t got designs on me, I hope?” Mary inquired, jumping too
rapidly to conclusions.
“I didn’t know you were here,” said Denis, laughing more bitterly and
artificially than before.
“What IS the matter, Denis?”
He sat down on the edge of the mattress, and for all reply went on
laughing in the same frightful and improbable tone.
An hour later he was reposing with his head on Mary’s knees, and she,
with an affectionate solicitude that was wholly maternal, was running
her fingers through his tangled hair. He had told her everything,
everything: his hopeless love, his jealousy, his despair, his
suicide--as it were providentially averted by her interposition. He had
solemnly promised never to think of self-destruction again. And now his
soul was floating in a sad serenity. It was embalmed in the sympathy
that Mary so generously poured. And it was not only in receiving
sympathy that Denis found serenity and even a kind of happiness; it
was also in giving it. For if he had told Mary everything about his
miseries, Mary, reacting to these confidences, had told him in return
everything, or very nearly everything, about her own.
“Poor Mary!” He was very sorry for her. Still, she might have guessed
that Ivor wasn’t precisely a monument of constancy.
“Well,” she concluded, “one must put a good face on it.” She wanted to
cry, but she wouldn’t allow herself to be weak. There was a silence.
“Do you think,” asked Denis hesitatingly--“do you really think that
she...that Gombauld...”
“I’m sure of it,” Mary answered decisively. There was another long
pause.
“I don’t know what to do about it,” he said at last, utterly dejected.
“You’d better go away,” advised Mary. “It’s the safest thing, and the
most sensible.”
“But I’ve arranged to stay here three weeks more.”
“You must concoct an excuse.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
“I know I am,” said Mary, who was recovering all her firm
self-possession. “You can’t go on like this, can you?”
“No, I can’t go on like this,” he echoed.
Immensely practical, Mary invented a plan of action. Startlingly, in the
darkness, the church clock struck three.
“You must go to bed at once,” she said. “I’d no idea it was so late.”
Denis clambered down the ladder, cautiously descended the creaking
stairs. His room was dark; the candle had long ago guttered to
extinction. He got into bed and fell asleep almost at once.